creating my own context processor in django

The context processor you have written should work. The problem is in your view.

Are you positive that your view is being rendered with RequestContext?

For example:

def test_view(request):    return render_to_response('template.html')

The view above will not use the context processors listed in TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS. Make sure you are supplying a RequestContext like so:

def test_view(request):    return render_to_response('template.html', context_instance=RequestContext(request))

According to the django docs you can use render as a shortcut instead of render_to_response with the context_instance argument:

Alternatively, use the render() shortcut which is the same as a call to render_to_response() with a context_instance argument that forces the use of a RequestContext.

Since Django 1.8 you register your custom context processors like this:

TEMPLATES = [    {        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',        'DIRS': [            'templates'        ],        'APP_DIRS': True,        'OPTIONS': {            'context_processors': [                'django.template.context_processors.debug',                'django.template.context_processors.request',                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',                'www.context_processors.instance',            ],        },    },]

assuming your context processor is in app www in context_processors.py